The More Fungible Worker - <AUTHOR> http://unpleasantfacts.com/the-more-fungible-worker <comment><USER2> >The Luddites tried futilely to stop progress that benefited society

Luddites were not anti-technology nor were they anti progress. They destroyed technology as a tactic to raise the price of the more automated competition. Their competition made cheaper, crappier equivalents of their artisanal work made with de-skilled McJob equivalent workers whose wages were pressured to abhorrent levels (via other means like the enclosure movement/Napoleonic wars).

Similarly, people who strike are not "futilely trying to stop the existence of work". It's another tactic.

In a way, the Luddites are pretty similar to the anti-H1B crowd of hacker news.

>Before these technological advancements, workers enjoyed mini-monopolies.

This is a hacky way of looking at it but the conclusion sort of works. It makes much more sense to look at relative market power of employees vs. employers rather than use the all-or-nothing terminology of monopoly vs. perfect competition.

If Amazon workers attempt to sabotage Amazon's stock picking machinery, I expect it will result in an increase in wages, much like it did for the Luddites. They will be _called_ Luddites, but similar to the original Luddites, they kind of only really have a problem with technology that is used to control them.

<comment><USER3> > Their competition made cheaper, crappier equivalents of their artisanal work > made with de-skilled McJob equivalent workers whose wages were pressured to > abhorrent levels

... which enabled working-class people to own fairly large amounts of clothing for the first time, and even have fashionable clothing, which had once been the exclusive preserve of the rich.

Don't try to paint this as all rich-vs-poor. The poor got a lot out of mechanization, even at the time, and reforming _that_ system worked out a lot better than trying to work with people who were so threatened by change they would destroy other peoples' method of earning a living.

<comment><USER2> >which enabled working-class people to own fairly large amounts of clothing for the first time

Actually...

"English peasants didn't want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. _Using Adam Smith's own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes._ Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It's really not much of a choice, is it?

Faced with a peasantry that didn't feel like playing the role of slave, philosophers, economists, politicians, moralists and leading business figures began advocating for government action. Over time, they enacted a series of laws and measures designed to push peasants out of the old and into the new by destroying their traditional means of self-support."

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/the-rise-of- bullshit-...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/the-rise-of-bullshit- jobs.html)

In today's world, austerity serves the same function as the enclosure laws. Reduce public sector demand for labor so as to push down wages across the board.

<comment><USER4> Did every single English peasant really have access to leather and the skills to make their own shoes? Did the shoes they managed to procure really cost so little compared to the manufactured ones? Did they really cost so little taking quality, durability, and procurement of materials into account?

If the economic decision was really so simple and the desire for a rural communal lifestyle was really so strong, urbanization never would have happened.

<comment><USER2> Yup. Except that the rural communal lifestyle was prohibited via the game laws and the enclosure movement.

Urbanization really wouldn't have happened without this. Indeed, as the pamphlets demonstrate, this is largely _why_ the enclosure movement was enacted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes. I refer to the Amazon warehouse operation as "Machines should think. People should work". All the thinking is done by computers and robots. Watch one of the Kiva robot videos that shows the human picker reaching where the laser pointer tells them to reach, waving the item under the scanner, and putting the object in the bin where the light is on.

Those people will be unemployed as soon as the Amazon Robot Picking Challenge ([http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/](http://amazonpickingchallenge.org/)) succeeds.

This is the future.

<comment><USER6> I'm afraid for a future that ends up like this:

Nobody hires people because robots can do it cheaper, so no one has a job, so no one can buy anything, so no robots do those things that they could do cheaper.

The technology doesn't even have to _exist_ to cause poor-world. Only be possible.

Put me firmly in the basic minimum income camp.

<comment><USER7> there will be people who have money (for example, those who inherited their wealth, or those who own capital/businesses). Their needs may vastly differ from the poor, and because they have money, the market serves them. The jobless poor will just either live on what little the state/charity can provide, or just die on the streets. I don't see basic income as feasible politically nor in practise. Therefore, what you must do now is to ensure that you are one of those who have money.

<comment><USER8> While I generally agree with your analysis/predictions, there is an alternative outcome to the "dying in the streets" outcome (which IS where we are heading, unfortunately).

The alternative is the same one that happens every time a large enough percentage of the population starts going hungry: they simply take what they need from those that are hoarding it. Sometimes this includes putting those responsible for the hoarding under the guillotine - possibly for revenge and and possibly as a warning for future generations.

The future you descirbe is a prerequisite, and it will get ugly a lot sooner than most people expect. While being one of those with money is probably a good idea when possible, it is also a good idea to prepare for when those who do _not_ have money decide to go full Robespierre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The essence of the article is about effectiveness of technology/trade in reducing the 'gaps' between the capabilities of workers/artisans results in lowering their average compensation. But I think there's something missing. Professor Katz famously suggested not to become scientists [1] because getting your research funded becomes top priority than the assurance that 'all you'll do is research'. In a way, since we live in a society, workers need to feel personally responsible for /constantly/ finding the appropriateness (value) of their skills and elevate them as necessary to make sure they have a steady income and their craft is still valued by 'customers'. If you stagnate there, then you will gradually (or rapidly) become replaceable. And as you age, being indispensable becomes harder. So, perhaps, it makes sense to learn things that ensure stability of demand for your skills.

1- [http://physics.wustl.edu/katz/scientist.html](http://physics.wustl.edu/katz/scientist.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> When I discuss 'Policies and Procedures' (including but not limited to tech like the OP's Amazon example) I often refer to "Plug and Play" staff [1]. If, for any reason, an employee leaves a position then the business is able to replace them with minimum fuss. The more the role can depend on technology, the more 'true' this is, but it needn't be seen as tech-specific.

Staff of course have a different view as to their "fungibility". I tend to overcome this in two ways:

First, "If you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted." That resonates a lot.

Second, I replace the 'Bus Factor'[2] context with the 'Lottery Factor'. More directly, "How many of you, if you won $35M in Powerball, would still be working here next year? So let's plan for at least one of you to win the lottery."

(They're not bad at maths, they get that it's the same conversation as being hit by a bus, but the energetic flip leads to faster engagement in the process.)

[1] Maybe I need a new Cloud metaphor?

[2] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

<comment><USER7> > First, "If you can't be replaced then you can't be promoted." That resonates > a lot.

that is a very sneaky way of saying that their wage/salary cannot increase.

<comment><USER10> How so? Most of my clients give 5%+ payrises each year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand the argument that just because technological progress in the past has led to higher wages and employment (indeed, it actually hasn't always) that it's a given that this will always happen.

It seems to me that it is self-evident that most low-skill labor, at the very least, is in the process of being automated and is therefore going to be unnecessary. There has been no other time in human history when ALL low-skill labor was in the process of being automated in such a generalized way.

While it is certainly true that there is and always has been huge economic pressure on low-skill labor to be destroyed, it is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate and the economic forces that are destroying it don't seem to be creating any residual low-skill labor (like the assembly line, etc did). Making sure that the labor force is educated enough to not need the low-skill labor is good, and it is undeniable that everybody is getting more educated. Still, I worry a great many people are going to get left out in the dark.

<comment><USER12> > Making sure that the labor force is educated enough to not need the low- > skill labor is good, and it is undeniable that everybody is getting more > educated.

That's very deniable in the US. The rising cost of education and lack of government funding for education means that many, many people are not getting more educated.

<comment><USER13> This graph:

[http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/histor...](http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/fig1.jpg)

and others on this page:

[http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/histor...](http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/)

seem to disagree with your intuition

<comment><USER12> more people != everyone

I'm making a bit of a pedantic point, I realize. But I think that just because more people are getting educated doesn't mean we can ignore the people who are still consistently excluded from higher education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Spreadsheets made it easier/possible for "users" (accountants) to write financial "programs", reducing the need for custom development of financial software. If there are more innovations like spreadsheets, there will be less or different needs for programmers as the labor category exists today. Fungibility cuts both ways.

<comment><USER15> The circle of life:

Finance task :

> finance system to address task

> excel spreadsheet to address finance system shortcomings

> finance system to 'formalise' the spreadsheet

> excel spreadsheet to address finance system shortcomings

> finance system to 'formalise' the spreadsheet

etc...

<comment><USER14> This circle could also apply to enterprises and startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Workers becoming more fungible happens even in creative domains. For example, I've heard several companies cite how advances in sales software have dramatically reduced the training time for new sales people as well as reducing the gap between top performers and everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER17> People who kept doing things the old inefficient way will see their wages go down.

If a worker can make ten times the widgets with newer technology, the amount that can be charged per widget, and thus the amount a worker can be paid to produce each one, has to drop eventually.

<comment><USER18> And as the inefficient workers get outcompeted and more skilled competition shows up, the end result is always the same: new widget costs 1/10 of the original costs, those who make them earn the same amount of money as they did before, but now 9/10 of workers are without a job. It has always been like that and it's responsible for the age of plenty we live in - but the problem of today is that those 9/10 of workers without a job are increasingly unable to find another one, as everything gets slowly automated away.

<comment><USER17> 9/10 of workers are not out of a job. Unemployment is not 90%.

<comment><USER18> They didn't use to be, but - looking at the rate of automation - they're about to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Those that can 'defer to the machine' are going to do better in many jobs (that will remain) in the future. This is a big part of Cowen's "Average is Over." Here's a good review of it which goes into that aspect of it:

[http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20150109](http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20150109)

Excerpt:

'The moral Cowen draws from freestyle chess is that the winners of these games, and he extrapolates, the economic "games" of the future, are those human beings who are most willing to defer to the decisions of the machine. I find this conclusion more than a little chilling given we're talk about real people here rather than Knight or Pawns, but Cowen seems to think it's just common sense.

In its simplest form Cowen's argument boils down to the prediction that an increasing amount of human work in the future will come in the form of these AI-human teams. Some of this, he admits, will amount to no workers at all with the human part of the "team" reduced to an unpaid customer. I now almost always scan and bag my own goods at the grocery store, just as I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to a bank teller who wasn't my mom. Cowen also admits that the rise of AI might mean the world actually gets "dumber" our interactions with our environment simplified to foster smooth integration with machines and compressed to meet their limits.

In his vision intelligent machines will revolutionize everything from medicine to education to business management and negotiation to love. The human beings who will best thrive in this new environment will be those whose work best complements that of intelligent machines, and this will be the case all the way from the factory floor to the classroom. Intelligent machines should improve human judgement in areas such as medical diagnostics and would even replace judges in the courtroom if we are ever willing to take the constitutional plunge. Teachers will go from educators to "coaches" as intelligent machines allow individualized instruction , but education will still require a human touch when it comes to motivating students.'

</comment><comment><USER20> A timely article considering the deformation of traditional IT departments threatened by Docker.

<comment><USER21> I remember talking to a few people in high school about me studying CS because I wanted to become a developer.

They all my IT-friends were like, "Don't do it man. No one needs new software! Better be an administrator, in the future they will be needed to manage all the IT stuff that already exists, but there will hardly be anything new on the marked!"

That was 2003, right before the social and mobile boom.

<comment><USER22> Docker isn't anything new (perhaps nicer toolset on an old idea), and admins aren't getting replaced by devs any faster than devs getting replaced by admins. If anything, the amount of work continues to get abstracted away for both camps.

Maybe you won't need sysadmins in ~10 years. Maybe. Those of us still doing IT will just pivot into another niche.

<comment><USER23> With more and more abstraction layers the things that could fuck up rise exponentially and are harder to track. So while you won't need 10 ops to be able to keep your servers up, you will need 10 trained IT investigators to find why java 12 inside docker 8.14 connecting to whatever nosql crashes when there is full moon.

<comment><USER24> Things don't really work that way.

Yes, the possiblities for bugs increase exponentialy. But no, that does not mean you'll need exponentialy more time tracking them. And that's not even the most important scaling factor: the point is that good abstractions are simple, and get reused enough so that they create very few interface bugs, and those bugs get resolved.

<comment><USER22> > Things don't really work that way.

Have you worked with Docker in production? Managing tens of thousands of running containers isn't what I call "plug and play", and orchestration tools like Mesos don't make it as simple as people would like to believe.

I will admit great strides are being made, but all this handwaving that we're at some sort of "great push forward" is pretty laughable if you look at the history of computing.

<comment><USER24> If it's so, it's because Docker isn't a good abstraction. (And we can expect it to get eventually replaced by something that correctly solves the problem.)

We have plenty of examples of good abstraction already (programming languages, operational systems, databases...). After we get one, most people stop even thinking that it's prossible to program without them.

<comment><USER22> > We have plenty of examples of good abstraction already (programming > languages, operational systems, databases...). After we get one, most people > stop even thinking that it's prossible to program without them.

Right. And that's why we're how many versions of Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX in? PHP, Python, .Net, VB, Ruby, GoLang, Rust, Objective C, Swift.

And so the dance continues.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Twitter Shadowbanning me? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151981022076/is-twitter-shadowbanning-me <comment><USER2> You never really had the freedom of speech on Twitter. It has become pretty obvious that if you don't agree with the current left-leaning narrative, you will eventually get banned from Twitter. The irony is that the founders had this idea that it would give everyone a voice..and in reality, only the people with approved opinions get that voice.

The sick part is that bullying is perfectly acceptable behavior, if you are on the wrong side of the liberal narrative.

Ken Bone is a perfect example of this. In the first couple of days, he was treated like a star. After someone found out that had some offensive opinions, the press turned on him and wrote some of the most horrific and abhorrent things about him I think I have ever seen.

It's almost like once the press (or social media) finds an unacceptable opinion that you have, it's fair game to treat you less than human.

If you want me to be accepting of anyone, there should be the same acceptance back, even if you don't agree with a person's political opinion or lifestyle.

This sort of authoritarian behavior will only turn good people like me into the 'racist' and 'bigot' you are trying to accuse me of being already.

<comment><USER3> I can see the same thing happening here on hacker news. Folks are dehumanizing any political opponent and I find it very scary for the future.

<comment><USER4> I think in the new left/right post-war arrangement is losing territory in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States.

What we're seeing I believe is the old right and left coming up. You see that a bit with Sanders (who I see as a moderate leftist who'll be replaced by somebody further to the left), the new Labour leader and then UKIP/National Front and the neoreactionaries which hail from the 19th century.

This is why there is so much aggravation around and fur flying. Lots of people are being exposed to the concept that huge numbers of people seriously disagree with them for the first time. Old questions considered settled are being redebated and the old answers are no longer convincing.

 _If_ this is allowed to rise then a form of balance will be achieved. As President Snow articulated in the Hunger Games, you actually _require_ a certain amount of change to keep long term political stability.

If not then yes, I do believe there will be war. I've felt that way for several years now. I think the CIA analyst's predictions and timeline on Europe are accurate.

tldr; If you allow Trump/Le Pen etc in power now, there will be less conflict later on. If the established order in the West cockblocks today then tensions will build into much worse outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple of other links on Twitter shadowbanning:

[https://medium.com/@UnshavedGoat/is-twitter-shadowbanning- yo...](https://medium.com/@UnshavedGoat/is-twitter-shadowbanning- you-a55941f9b3cc)

[http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2016/07/twitter-shadowbans- cens...](http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2016/07/twitter-shadowbans-censorship- and-antitrust/8173/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Twitter doesn't need shadowbanning. There already is no freedom of speech, period.

Just looking at what's going on on Twitter nowadays, it's turned into a social network for digital witch hunt, where people hunt down and character assassinate anyone who's related to Donald Trump.

Actually, expanding on this, it's not even Donald Trump. People use Twitter to witch hunt anyone who has different ideas than themselves.

Someone should make a dystopian movie around this theme.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think Scott Adams may be overestimating his influence at this point... I can't imagine him having a credible threat against Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER8> If reports in the business media are to be believed, trolls and harassment cost Twitter a potential acquisition and a ~20% drop in share price (~$3B in market cap)

This puts them in a tough position - finding a way to clean up the platform without worsening the user growth problem. A lot of the features that make Twitter popular with public conversations are also the features that make abuse easy and prevalent.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/disney- sa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/disney-said-to-have- dropped-twitter-pursuit-partly-over-image)</comment>


Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents' aggression - <AUTHOR> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474 <comment><AUTHOR> Submitter note: I changed "adolescents' aggressive behaviour" to "adolescents' aggression" because the former wouldn't fit. I hope that's okay.</comment>


Jim Balsillie resigns from RIM - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/balsillie-resigns-from-rim-board/article2386012/

<comment><USER2> Yea, well Im a little surprised they still have a executive team! Hmm...</comment>


The Pointless Leaderboard - <AUTHOR> http://onwander.com/leaderboard

<comment><USER2> not sure what this is yet... but it looks fun, and pretty too!</comment>


China introduces 'social' punishments for scientific misconduct - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07740-z <comment><USER2> This is insane; this creates a system that can easily blackball an individual with no recourse.

Do you think the person denying a bank loan, hiring, approving jobs, etc. is going to check and verify that what the person did is wrong? Or can this at any moment be used against anyone.

If the government wants to punish someone it should be through the courts and through a fine or some sort of government restriction, not enforced by the public sector.

<comment><USER3> My gut reaction is to agree with you.

After a little thought, I'm not so sure.

Could such a system prevent scientists and doctors claiming, on behalf of their employer, that there's no connection between smoking and health, or that there's no anthropogenic climate change, or that there's no asbestos in the baby powder? Then there's the countless pseudo scientific cures and remedies. Could it do better than the system we have?

Clearly, it could be abused, but so can the system we have and it is being, heavily.

Which produces the more honest result?

<comment><USER4> Why is this down voted?

This comment raised a reasonable, and frankly, quite meaningful, question about the prospect of this new system.

<comment><USER5> To quote the Guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Votes tend to improve a lot over time as more users visit, so just wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with this. They are punishing those who are using fake CVs, falsifying data, fake resumes. We don't have much of a problem here with that and it's easy to do solid background checks and ethics are just higher. In that environment this may be a great solution. They aren't arresting or jailing anyone and this in my opinion is an ample threat to prevent would be borderline cheaters to think twice.

There is far more temptation to cheat when money, job, promotion is on the line and you have no social welfare to fall back on. False scientific data worsens the country's image and threatens lives etc.

We have our own deep deep problems with research but that's another discussion.

<comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entire "social credit" system completely opaque? As far as I know, there's no due process, trial, or opportunity for those being labeled with an offense (for to be "accused" implies that there is some transparency involved) to defend themselves. That, coupled with the Chinese government's abuse of the system to suppress their citizens (the system already penalizes you for merely suggesting that the government is imperfect) makes me think that it'll likely be used to e.g. punish those publishing papers that don't agree with the state narrative.

<comment><USER6> Oh you're absolutely right about the punishing those who don't agree with the state. But as of now they already do punish by sending them into a black cell disappearing forever. Xi has done this to anyone including multibillionaires and CCP highest ranking billionaires. When he was in charge of rooting out corruption, he went after enemies to shore up political support. A group of highly influential CCP elites wrote a letter disagreeing with the road to tyranny and I believe every one of them disappeared.

I'm sure the system has abuses, I think it is opaque but not sure but I imagine beaurocrats will abuse it with petty grudges and bribes. Just in this case, I'm glad China is cracking down on scientific fraud and I prefer these measures to jail. I don't think going against the state's narrative for hard sciences is possible. For policy, sociology, history, I'm sure there is already an iron hand there with no room to wiggle.

<comment><USER8> > A group of highly influential CCP elites wrote a letter disagreeing with the > road to tyranny and I believe every one of them disappeared.

I am extremely curious what this letter contained. Do you have any idea what it was called or any ideas on how to find it? Key words or a time frame or anything like that. (Not accusing you of making it up at all by the way, if it sounds like that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A little shameless self-promotion here, but if anyone is interested I just finished translating part of an article from Han dyansty China about law and punishment: [https://dragoncarvings.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/law-and- puni...](https://dragoncarvings.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/law-and-punishment- in-the-book-of-han/)

<comment><USER10> I appreciate you doing this. Much wisdoms in the Book of Han as usual. Though I agree with a lot of points in there, the problem is power corrupt the wisest. Chinese has been through those issues so. many. times... Still making the same mistakes. There WILL be abuses of power, inequalities and social disruptions because of this. Cycle of life in deed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have some doubts regarding this --

1.) What if the topic on which someone wants to publish is still developing, and the researches in the meantime produces wrong results which can be a genuine case, then does the individual get penalized?

2.) Also if point 1 is allowed then one might always claim this as a backdoor escape for all wrong publications.

3.) What role does a reviewer have if there is a false publication, will the reviewer be also punished?

I am not suggesting this is a bad move, it is just a different view point which might actually work out for good, but unless all points have been addressed correctly, claiming that something might be a punishable offence is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER12> I'd add the follow-up question of "how could this system being maliciously gamed?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There should be severe punishment for scientific misconduct. Especially fraud. The lynchpin is who gets to decide? That said, I suggest another punishment. Branding cheaters with a scarlet letter. WCGW?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is so complex. I think it's too complex to completely understand for me (dude in california). Originally I thought it was kind of dystopian, but in itself (ie academics doing "bad things") it fits into the rest of the social fabric of the community. The overall social credit system is super strange to me, which I think is worth talking about, but this part seems like an extension of that status quo.

I think people need more economic mobility, and the ability to live where they want when policies like this come up. Bringing the smartest / most entrepreneurial Chinese away from China because of bad policy is one way of driving economic incentives... but I'm not sure how to deal with this in itself.

Makes me want to study sociology more though.

<comment><USER15> > The overall social credit system is super strange to me

Spotted the person who hasn't seen the relevant (and really awesome) Black Mirror episode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> thats horrible! It makes me don't want to go back to China for having a faculty job.

<comment><USER17> What sort of research do you want to do that you're afraid might result in punishment?

Or put another way, what do you think a government agency might see as misconduct that you see as legitimate?

<comment><USER18> > what do you think a government agency might see as misconduct that you see > as legitimate?

I'm not the GP, but that one is easy:

\- Discovering that some drug is ineffective (or worse) when the manufacturer has made party contributions;

\- Discovering that some public policy does not benefit the population while it benefits some politician;

\- Any research on a propaganda line with results that are not aligned with the official truths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My understanding is that the Chinese government is implementing this system because there has been a great breakdown in social norms of honesty and rule- following. For thousands of years the Chinese operated under an elaborate set of social norms from Confucianism.

But then these were thrown away under Communism, and in particular during the Cultural Revolution period there was paranoid chaos, and a great loss of social trust. And then a further radical change with the capitalist industrial revolution under Deng Jiaoping.

The consequence is that people don't trust anyone outside their immediate circles, and often feel no obligation to act in a non-harmful way toward them. The Government is trying to restore a sense of moral obligation to the members of the population. It will be interesting to see how well it goes.

<comment><USER20> Eloquently stated. Although the observation requires a grasping of Chinese history, so it will be dismissed by many, I believe this is on the mark, not withstanding standard disclaimers around any appeal to an historical utopia.

</comment></comment><comment> abc-xyz Surprised no one seems to have addressed the real purpose of the "social" punishment for "scientific misconduct", which is to punish those who dare to mention or research topics that the government doesn't like, such as the tiananmen massacre, Huawei spyware, etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a great incentive for top Chinese scientists to immigrate elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER22> Will this weaken the scientific community in China?

Will this cause researchers to become adverse to speaking out for fear of retaliatory attacks on themselves?

Seems like a major step in the wrong direction for Chinese society.

<comment><USER23> > Chinese leaders have been increasingly focused on scientific misconduct, > following ongoing reports of researchers there using fraudulent data, > falsifying CVs and faking peer reviews

It sounds like a step in the right direction. It feels less gross if you think of "social punishment" as a lighter version of "legal punishment". No need to send cheaters to jail, but don't let them off the hook either.

Assuming the system won't be abused for political (I'm sure it will), the detection is accurate (I'm sure it'll be hard), the social punishment is reasonable (we'll see), it sounds reasonable in theory.

<comment><USER24> The social score in China is even worse than in Black Mirror, it defines everything you can access from bank, education, job, health, transport , social relationships, etc.

It is not a legal score, it _is_ a social score (both in theory and in practice)

I completely agree that it is stupid to send non-dangerous people to jail, but we should punish them with fines and possibly specific job restrictions decided on a per-case basis by a tribunal if there is a clear danger, but not by restricting their every aspect of their private, public, social and professional life.

<comment><USER25> Fines will give you less money, which will restrict every aspect of your private, public, social and professional life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "people who lose trust in one area of society should face restrictions in other areas."

Sounds very reasonable to me.</comment>


New McAfee patent hints at a more walled-off online world - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/new-mcafee-patent-hints-at-a-more-walled-off-online-world/9449 <comment><USER2> Fortunately this failed in the 1990s when Intel/Microsoft tried it (Palladium); it's essentially the default on iOS's mobile ecosystem, though.</comment>


Show HN: Check Out My Landing Page - <AUTHOR>

If you have a moment, please let me know what you think of my a) landing page design and b) overall value proposition.
I'm looking to see if this idea validates before I invest more money into it. Any growth hackers have suggestions for advertising it? I'm going to pay a little bit for AdWords, not totally sure what keywords I'm going to go for ("Girlfriend Gift Ideas" maybe?).  This is my first startup idea and all of my past startup job experience is with B2B. I'm not totally sure how to get in contact with boyfriends/husbands to get them to my page.
GiftBrother:    www.GiftBrother.com <comment><USER2> Cool concept... I think there's definitely a sweet spot for guys who have no idea what to buy their girlfriend or whatever...

Couple of thoughts, though they're not specifically about the landing page, more general things that popped into my head (bear with me!)

\- I'm not sure if many guys will be that into giving a gift _every_ single month just because, but to keep in line with the subscription model you could give an option to send more expensive gifts for just specific months (say their birthday / christmas) and then maybe just one or two other random occasions throughout the year as the "just because" gift.

\- I didn't get the gift brother name straight away. I guess what you're going for is "gift BROTHA" cool spelling and all, which is actually a great concept, I'd play on that as soon as you can--hire a designer to create a really cool looking cartoon guy, or something, who is like this suave guy who just _gets_ girls/partners/signficiant-others and is the ultimate wingman for gifts--it's a really great idea to play off, because I think people will really get the concept from that, as well.

\- To start have a DEAD-SIMPLE explanation with maybe three steps...maybe just three big images and descriptions like: 1\. Tell us about your partner and subscribe 2\. We do all the shopping / thinking / work 3\. You get all the credit! And you can be really funny/creative with that last one, so go nuts. I think people would dig a quirkier approach, cause it's a great concept.

After that, though there needs to be some more details, like where you get the gifts from, what kinds of gifts you can get and the prices point(s) available... whether you ship to obscure countries like mine (Australia) and ways to put the service on hold (or stop it?) for when you fall out of love... maybe you could switch to getting manly gifts for yourself when you don't have a significant other, just to ease the pain of the heartbreak (or something)

Just some thoughts. Looks cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea! I am a developer so take my advice with a grain of salt. The good - Very nice idea. I would subscribe to it within a moment's notice, not for every month though.

1\. I would change the fonts on the title and the content. May be hire a designer, if you can. 2. Try explaining your product with as less content as possible. People usually cannot spend too much time on your home page understanding your idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a good start!

Please find my feedback below:

1\. No call to action above the fold 2\. Too much copy on the landing page 3\. Try to make the photos the same size 4\. Adjust the form field length</comment>


Google Allo is now available on the web - <AUTHOR> https://allo.google.com/web <comment><USER2> > _Almost there! Just visit g.co /alloforweb in your Chrome browser._

> _Don 't have Chrome? Get it_

Ah yes, we're back in 2002 again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Support for other browsers are coming. I am neither working on this nor a Google engineer, but I saw a tweet from relavent developers working on this.

<comment><USER2> In 2002, it was much more difficult to support multiple browsers, and not doing so was still (eventually) frowned upon.

In 2017, with the combination of pretty close parity between VM's technology support (even Chakra) and the range of powerful preprocessors, build tools and shims, if you're not supporting multiple major user agents you're an objectively bad frontend developer. This isn't about the cost benefit of committing time to smaller market shares because the cost is negligible. The only explanation can be incompetence.

... or that you're the maker of said browser and stand to gain from actively deprioritising your competitors. I don't know that this is policy at Google, but it's either one or the other.

<comment><USER3> You're right. I've built pretty complex offline first web applications (using Indexeddb, Service Workers etc) initially on Chrome but when I tested them on Firefox and Edge there was just one minor bug on Edge (Indexeddb expected undefined but was given null in one case, Chrome and Firefox did not complain). So it definitely is possible to build sites that work on all browsers.

Maybe "use Chrome" means "not tested on Firefox and Edge?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://i.imgur.com/12g0j6f.png](https://i.imgur.com/12g0j6f.png)

</comment><comment><USER5> Google is a complete joke when it comes to understanding people.

Allo Duo Google Chat Google Meet

Four. Four different chatting applications. Whatsapp has one. Facebook has one. Apple has one. WeChat has one. Google has four.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure Facebook has two - WhatsApp and FB Messenger - and is struggling to figure out (and working on) how to keep just one and eliminate the other.

<comment><USER7> Facebook has many apps: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and maybe more

<comment><USER6> I was referring to primarily text/emoji based, person-to-person apps/platforms (similar to Allo). That's why I listed only WhatsApp and FB Messenger and intentionally ignored the other ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's me, not you, Allo. I loathe communication apps that rely only on phone numbers and won't work without access to one's contacts/address book. My phone number is highly important to me from a privacy angle and I don't give it away willy-nilly. I'd feel a little more comfortable when this works with email addresses alone, which I have many of and use different ones for different purposes.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm hugely disappointed! And where's Hangouts Chat? I think Google tries to implement some sort of diversity in their product line as well!

<comment><USER9> 2011: Google tries to compete with Facebook: Google+ 2016: Google tries to compete with Telegram, Whatsapp and aton of other messenger: Allo

<comment><USER8> I think Google is totally lost, because since when centralized communication is a bad thing? They didn't get why Facebook released Messenger as a separate app or why they bought WhatsApp.

<comment><USER9> This is not about technology, this is about user war. Back in 2011, Google got seriously scared about Facebook growth. So they naively came up with this Google+ idea, which of course died and joined the long list of Google's embarrassing tries in the social networking space.

It is sad to see the negative effects of Facebook, on one side on users and stealing their privacy and data, and on the other side on giants like Google, who used to create cool projects like Gmail back when the internet was a cool breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The screaming-monster image and the context-free exhortation to switch to Chrome (no, thanks!) do very little to inform me about what Allo is or why I would want to use it. This does not strike me as a particularly good design.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this means Hangouts is going to be deprecated soon.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it. Hangouts is a widely used tool in the Enterprise.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention no one is using Allo (based on anecdotes).

<comment><USER13> I installed it today out of curiosity - 15 contacts had it installed, and google play reports over 10 milion downloads - so someone must be using it.

That being said - i was perfectly fine with hangouts and hate fragmentation.

<comment><USER14> How many of those are active users though? According to this story from Jan, there are very few new downloads:

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/01/31/google-allo-drops- of...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/01/31/google-allo-drops-off-the- top-500-apps-chart-on-google-play/)

And some of those installs may be due to the spammy nagware scheme google uses to force people to install it so they can see messages:

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/allo/QaFAiTvTEr...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/allo/QaFAiTvTErk/rQfo0TLZFgAJ)

<comment><USER13> I honestly have no idea, I installed it out of curiosity to see the web interface built in polymer. Ideally I'd just see google stick to hangouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did anyone else notice that QR code changes on reload? Is that simply for analytics? Or is there another purpose?

<comment><USER16> Security. It's token based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So no support for anything other than Chrome and no support for devices other than Android? Really?

</comment><comment><USER18> At one point, Google, you had a preferred messaging position on my devices.

For me, from my perspective, you pissed it away.

"Bye-bye"</comment>


Simplicity in tutorials.  - <AUTHOR> http://whatsmyudid.com/

<comment><USER2> Great tut! love the simplicity, cleanness, and interactivity. Can you look at this link <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4377634>, and let me know if you'd be interested in contributing to a project like this?</comment>


One parameter is always enough [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://colala.bcs.rochester.edu/papers/piantadosi2018one.pdf <comment><USER2> Their equation is cute, but this really isn't remotely surprising and the implications aren't as significant as they imply. The result relies heavily on the fact that their theta parameter has infinite precision. You can encode as much information as you want in a single real number with infinite precision. Think of it this way: a single precision float requires 4 bytes to store while a double requires 8. If all you need is single precision, then you can store two floats inside of one double variable with each occupying 4 of the 8 bytes. Now replace the double with an infinite precision number that takes infinite bytes to represent. Once you have an infinite number of bytes to work with, you can pack in as many floats of finite precision in there as you want. That's basically what they're doing here, they just have a simple closed form expression for decoding it.

The reason that the implications are a bit overblown is that their model is tremendously and chaotically dependent on the value of theta. The plots that they include in the paper require _hundreds of thousands of digits of precision_ in the model parameter. Nobody evaluates a model based simply on how well it fits the data and its number of parameters; you also look at how well the model parameters are constrained and what the uncertainty bands on the fit are. With this model, theta would be completely unconstrained and their uncertainty bands would cover the entire range of the data that they're fitting. It simply doesn't matter how many parameters you have when that's the case, it means that your fit is useless.

<comment><USER3> "It simply doesn't matter how many parameters you have when that's the case, it means that your fit is useless." That is their _entire point_ \- that model complexity can't be measured in number of coefficients, since this model only has one coefficient, yet has model complexity as high as is possible.

This is meant as a counterexample to existing practices, not as something you should be doing.

<comment><USER4> But since everyone (implicitly or explicitly) specifies the precision of the coefficients (eg fp32, fp64, int8, etc), it's a complete straw man you're arguing against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course one arbitrarily large precision parameter is enough. Over 85 years ago Gödel demonstrated that every computable function, no matter how complex, has a representation as a single real number. This idea was used in the diagonalization step in his proof of Gödel's Theorem.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, encoding data into numbers and creating an equation that essentially provides a bitmap renderer. Basically what computers do all the time, but we just don't realise it because most of the time they don't show the data that way. Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper%27s_self- referential_fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper%27s_self- referential_formula)

Also related to how arithmetic compression works.

</comment><comment><USER7> One can easily embed R into R^N with a dense image, so it's straightforward to see that one parameter is always enough. In the case of computable reals (which contain everything we deal with when doing things numerically), the embedding is even bijective. This completely misses the point, though, because the "natural" number of parameters is important in understanding reality.

<comment><USER8> How do you determine the natural number of parameters?

<comment><USER7> That is generally an unsolved problem, and highly specific to the situation. Even the interpretation of the question depends on the context. To read more about it, I would look under the term "System Identification" and "Mathematical Modelling", but I might have different contexts in mind that you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the equation comes out to

f(x) = sin^2(A * B^x)

for particular choices of A and B. But I don't think you actually need the squaring - you can do the same thing with just f(x) = sin(A * B^x), and there's no particular need to talk about iterated logistic maps. For example, let B = 256, and let A = 2π * A', where A' is a number from 0 to 1. Then for some positive integer n,

\- f(n) ignores the first 8n binary digits of A', because sin(2π * q) ignores the integer part of q, and f(n) = sin(2π * A' * 2^(8n)).

\- But f(n) can be determined to a high degree of precision from the _following_ 8 binary digits. This is just because sin is continuous and doesn't have a high slope anywhere, so if you split [0, 2π] into 256 intervals, knowing which interval q is in gives you a suitably small range for sin(q). Therefore, you can put whatever you want in the digits after those 8.

\- Thus, the procedure for encoding a series of y values into A' is just to set each 8 binary digits in A' to an integer from 0 to 255 proportional to arcsin(y_value).

Of course, more than 8 bits can be used to achieve higher precision.

Indeed, you can replace sin with _any_ continuous periodic function, though the required precision depends on how steep the function gets.

Here's a simple demo: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SPdsHCZjH9wY0xjUvrX9ga1TTU2...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SPdsHCZjH9wY0xjUvrX9ga1TTU2Zpz7P/view?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER10> What is the for log probability ratio of two such fits? It is required by both AIC and BIC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > that "parameter counting" fails as a measure of model complexity when the > class of models under consideration is only slightly broad.

This seems plainly false. They only show that for this one specific function with one parameter determined to several million digits. That would not by any means be "only slightly broad".

They are essentially just restating that any dataset can be expressed as a single binary number therefore it can be "fitted" by a function that has a completely covering map between integers to integers. While I find it an interesting though not surprising element that they did it with the logistic map, their claimed purpose and conclusion are really far fetched.

</comment><comment><USER12> Based off of the title alone, I thought this was going to be about currying an n-ary function into multiple unary routines.

<comment><USER13> same

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems related to recent results about compression and generalization in neural networks ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.05862](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.05862)). Also to Bayesian Occam's razor arguments about univeral priors etc. All of these seem to be converging on the same point about how information content of a representation relates to generalization. Glad this paper points out that measures like BIC ignore information, instead substituting a weak heuristic such as number of parameters.

<comment><USER10> No they don't. Only because some people ignore the function which is the second parameter is where it fails.

Isn't the likelihood function of given fit with any parameter theta with this silly function almost always 0, making it wrong to use either AIC or BIC?

<comment><USER14> Ok, assume Gaussian noise with a fixed variance, hence 0 additional parameters.

<comment><USER10> AWGN would not help with fit probabilities, you get an additional constant term in log likelihood L. You still get to at least evaluate the log likelihood function or show that AWGN dominates the other term.

<comment><USER14> With the proposed method, you can fit arbitrarily closely to the data, so you can get your likelihood as good as you like, still using a single parameter. So you get good k(=1) and good likelihood, thus good AIC. The likelihood does not need to dominate the other term, it just has to be as good as the likelihood of the model you are comparing to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Many comments here criticize the paper because it proposes combining many parameters into a more accurate parameter, if you have something with infinite precision, you can encode any number of parameters into it.

But these criticisms miss a larger point. Mathematics has long had differing levels of infinity. The number of integers that exist, despite being infinite, is fewer than the number of real numbers that exist. Thus, any system, even with infinite precision, that is based on fixed representation of digits won't be sufficient to represent all real numbers.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's start that AIC is misused here as it is valid only when you have a likelihood function for the data. The mentioned scatter plots do not have any (or have something assumed) for prior. Likewise BIC.

The posterior likelihood function has very interesting values for this logistic map fit.

This is on the level of "gotcha". Usually the AIC and BIC are supposed to be negative for a correct model and the for is supposed to have a quantifiable information loss.

<comment><USER3> AIC and BIC are only really valid when comparing nested models anyway.

<comment><USER16> This article at least claims that's not right: [https://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/aic/](https://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/aic/)

(And Wikipedia: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion#How_to_apply_AIC_in_practice))

Do you have a reference? Or were you thinking of the Likelihood Ratio Test?

<comment><USER3> Okay reading, it sounds like before Burnham and Anderson (2002) it was only known to be valid for nested models, but they were able to derive it from more fundamental assumptions to remove that restriction.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion#H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion#History)

I wasn't aware of that update until now (despite being 16 years old), thank you!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a typo in the definition of S(z)? Where does the x come from?

<comment><USER18> You're right, from the description it is clear that x should be z instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Waw, pretty cool actually

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't see how this improves upon the Stone-Weierstrass theorem, aside from expanding the range of functions that can uniformly approximate a continuous function or scatter plot. A scatter plot can be turned into a continuous function by setting the value to be the linear function that connects the two nearest data points, a piecewise linear function.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%E2%80%93Weierstrass_theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%E2%80%93Weierstrass_theorem)

<comment><USER9> The improvement is that the function can represent any plot by adjusting a single coefficient, whereas a polynomial approximation has a number of coefficients equal to the number of points in the plot.

<comment><USER21> This is only an improvement in a superficial, linguistic sense though. If the single coefficient is just a bit-packing representation of many more degrees of freedom (because of its huge precision), then from a model information complexity point of view, the polynomial model could actually have fewer parameters, in the sense that the overall size of the combined parameter space is smaller, e.g. it's a smaller program size.

It reminds me of the Grue vs. Bleen question in philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Papers like this should just be a Github link. Stop letting researchers communicate with the real world. They write sentences filled with phrases like "can be shown to be."</comment>


How You Can Find Socialism in a Capitalist World - <AUTHOR> https://www.econlib.org/how-you-can-find-socialism-in-a-capitalist-world/ <comment><USER2> I don't think an ideal capitalist world would be much better.

A few monopoly corporations run everything. no laws to protect the environment, workers, everything is a commodity to be brought and sold, including facts. what laws do exist are used to benefit the rich and powerful.</comment>


Want to learn CAD, Code, Circuits, and how to put them all together? - <AUTHOR> https://painlessprototyping.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's all free. No purchasing of software, hardware, or tickets required. No previous experience needed either. It is going to be a like drinking out of a fire-hose though. So bring a notebook. Recordings will be posted on YouTube so you can watch again.

What's the catch? Nothing, I have a week off from work and I want to share what I do with others. Perhaps the catch is that I get to learn to be a better teacher and grow my following if my content is good.</comment>


Ask HN: Strategy to become the best programmer possible? - <AUTHOR>

What would be the best plan for becoming the best programmer you can possibly be? Most blog posts or articles I find when I google this question basically say that you have to be passionate, and you have to write a lot of code, but that's basically it.
But all of us are not fortunate enough to find some interest that's completely all-consuming. Don't get me wrong, I'm passionate about progress, about improving the world. And I like programming. I'm just not naturally completely absorbed by it.
So let's hypothetically assume that motivation or dedication is not a concern, that it is fixed. If we assume that you would find a way to put in X amount of hours per week, how should we distribute that time?
It's debatable what a "good programmer" is, but let's say that you want to be as diverse as possible, while at the same time having as much technical depth as possible. A different approach might be to outline two plans - one for becoming the best generalist and another plan for becoming the best specialist.
Some constraints to bring it somewhat closer to reality:
- Some fairly advanced educational background, say a university degree in software development or matching competence
- Having little or no previous experience of open source collaboration and not knowing where one would start
- Keeping a day time job (40 hours per week) that is moderately challenging and doesn't bring that many external incentives to become a lot better (say, an average web developer position or similar) at the same time
- Not spending more than 12 hours per day on work and personal training combined
- Having one day off on weekends
- (This leaves us at 72 hours per week, of which 40 hours are at the day job)
What would your optimal plan be, if we can assume that those 72 hours will be spent optimally, for 10 years? <comment><USER2> IMHO there are two aspects.

Technical:

Read a lot of new material: articles, books, source code. The more it is different from what you already know the better. Get as diverse a coverage as possible. Same goes for programming languages. A good starting point is the book _" Seven languages in seven weeks"_ because it covers a broad spectrum of language types.

But much more important than reading is doing: write a lot of code. Do the exercises in books you read, try out what you see in examples/articles/source code. Change things just to see what happens etc. Also lots of projects (from the tiny to the large) to put what you're learning to the test (and then make changes to your understanding based on trying things out). Contributing to open source projects isn't necessary, but definitely helps because you will learn a lot about how other people work and also get to take part in a much larger project than you would do on your own. There is unfortunately no shortcut or cheat to get out of actually _doing_ stuff. No matter how much you read, you can't become great without writing a lot of code too.

The second aspect is do things that help you be an stay as sharp as possible:

Get a lot of sleep. Get plenty of exercise. Get fresh air. Make sure you have a decent diet. I'd recommend specifically dedicating some of that 72 hour budget to getting more sleep and exercise. Also, when trying to solve tough problems, go outside to mull them over. Or sleep on it. Lots of downtime helps your brain make sense of things (I'm a big fan of "Hammock Driven Development"). Find ways to deal with stress too. Short term stress might help focus, but long term I find it kills concentration and problem solving ability.

Seriously though, the technical aspect is important, but don't neglect the health aspect as it really does make a huge difference in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> Great post. I really need to exercise. I do take walks though and I find that really helps. I think a lot of this boils down to knowing yourself, and that takes time!

For example, I've found that I skip around a lot, and I that's ok with me because I learn a LOT by doing that. I've found that if I stick to one thing longer than I'm able to stay interested, it is counterproductive. So I try to mix it. I read, I code, I explore, etc. As long as I feel internally that I'm making progress, I'm happy and I continue to love my work and love programming.

If anything by doing this I've found that I'm impatient and I want to learn more. I feel like my brain expands when I learn more about programming and I love that feeling.

Right now I'm working on C++ and sometimes I feel discouraged, but then I'll switch pace and - for example - write some code rather than read about how incompetent I am, and then I feel empowered and really want to read more.

So for me, a lot of it comes down to knowing yourself and working that to your advantage. And right now, I know that my health suffers due to my love for programming + all my other responsibilities. And so I'll work on that next.

Once again, nice post :)</comment></comment>


Monix Connect first release is out! - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/monix/monix-connect <comment><AUTHOR> Monix Connect `0.1.0` has been released! The set of connectors available so far are akka, hdfs, parquet, redis and aws (dynamodb and s3). Enjoy!</comment>


Neural nets typically contain smaller "subnetworks" that can often learn faster - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/smarter-training-neural-networks-0506 <comment><USER2> The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks, [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635)

This is in fact the most interesting hypothesis on why neural networks work I have ever read.

<comment><USER3> This makes me wonder, if a lottery ticket network is roughly 10% of the size of the original network, then I would expect that statistically you'd have to train a _randomly_ initialized verion of it 10 times to get the same result once. Is that true? Or is the actual topology of importance here?

<comment><USER4> ~No. Suppose that 5 of 50 channels in a particular network layer made up the 'lottery ticket' for that layer. The number of 'combos' of 5 channels that were trained at the same time is 50C5 (i.e. ~2million [0]).

Whereas training 5C5 (=1) 10 times only gives you 10 chances to get the right 5 together.

At least, that's one way to think about it.

[0]: : [https://www.mathway.com/popular- problems/Finite%20Math/60182...](https://www.mathway.com/popular- problems/Finite%20Math/601828)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" after training it on a huge amount of data it magically works"_

The magic part can be problematic. I think there have been some recent(ish) advances in introspection of neural networks to better understand how the initial input features influence the output, but the "black box" is still a problem in some practical environments where, for example, deployment of a model may need to show there's no disproportionate impact on effected sub populations.

Then there's things like the most recent Tesla Autopilot Crash [0] where comprehension of the failure mode & cause can be difficult to obtain.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19932918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19932918)

</comment><comment><USER6> This layout is known as autism. Higher aplasticity. Local hyperplasticity.

<comment><USER7> I feel like you mean this this is a joke but it I also feel one of the great unaddressed problems of strong AI - the human brain, optimized through evolution, still has a pretty large defect rate. On the march of progress it seems pretty likely that we will accidentally create an AI which qualifies as "insane" far before we can create a stable, adult-like being.

<comment><USER8> He might not be btw

<comment><USER8> To expand on this, ASD has been characterized as having hyper local structural/functional connectivity, but hypo long-range structural/functional connectivity. I think the grandparent was basing his comment on this type of evidence, but I may be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting but not unexpected.

How to find winning tickets without actually generating zillions of ANNs? I smell a genetic algorithm...

<comment><USER10> Tried it. It's actually faster to prune a very oversized neural network (also stated in the paper)

<comment><USER9> I didn't mean making the ANN itself, that is well described. I meant to optimize pruning rather than pruning at random or using ancient "optimal" algorithms. (They do not optimize for retraining ability. The goal is robustness.) The pruning algorithm used in the study is rudimentary.

Interesting bit of biology is that humans go through some sort of pruning phase during adolescence. It is not random. It is not one shot either and real neurons cannot be resurrected or reset either.

<comment><USER11> I haven't heard of particularly compelling advantages for one pruning algorithm over another... So at this point, it seems best to just keep it dead simple.

Assuming the lottery ticket hypothesis, you're just looking for the strong sub network, which should stand out under a number of approaches. The vestigial neurons shouldn't be doing much...

<comment><USER9> They had to train the various pruned nets 15+ times each to know the cutoff to be a success...

Also what is a strong subnetwork? What we get to know it's that their pruning algorithm produces a network that is vulnerable to weight randomization but better performing with original weights. If there is a better pruning algorithm, it could tell us more about structure of such subnetworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wondering if there's a way to iterate between large scale and localised optimisation. Years ago I did a bit with multigrid for PDE solving which iterates through ranges of resolution - not quite the same but maybe something analogous is possible?

</comment><comment><USER13> Why won't you just try training on a smaller network? That way you 'force' the network to train on the small amount of filters you have right?

<comment><USER2> Empirically, training smaller network fails. This paper is an attempt to explain why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sparsity is antithetical to performance, unfortunately, in any kind of realistic computer architecture unless you get _really_ sparse, or at least block-sparse (s.t. entire blocks of computation could be skipped), and you're not doing sgemm()-like things. So while this looks great on paper (and the paper is quite nice), in practice quantized, dense MobileNets will continue to dominate.

<comment><USER2> This paper is mostly about understanding what's going on. It doesn't claim to propose any new method of training, or any practically applicable result whatsoever, because it doesn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: For those who run their own business, how did you learn marketing? - <AUTHOR> I am really struggling to learn to market and to find product/market fit. Would love to hear about how you learnt that invaluable skill... <comment><USER2> Reading Seth Godin not only changed my life but taught me what great marketing is. Once you know what great marketing is choosing your tactics is easy.

His blog is invaluable ([https://seths.blog](https://seths.blog)). Read his "Top 100" and then go buy his latest book "This is Marketing."

Marketing in a nutshell: Grow an audience by earning their trust through consistently providing value and fulfilling your promises. Choose the medium that best resonates with your audience. And start with the minimum viable audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the suggestions. Going through them right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On Monday I'm launching a giveaway campaign of my 20 favourite marketing books on FB.

If you want I can just DM you the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that would be great. How would you DM me? Twitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the best resources I found was the Small Business Administration (SBA). I learned a lot from just reading through all their online resources ([https://www.sba.gov/business-guide](https://www.sba.gov/business-guide)). I'm pretty sure a similar organization exists wherever you are, just search for 'small business administration' \+ your location.

I think if you want more hands-on learning, you should schedule an appointment with an experienced business advisor. The small business org will do their best to find a relevant expert to advise you. I did one of these and I got matched with an Entrepreneurship lecturer from USC where I was able to pick up a ton of insight on marketing and running/starting up a business in general. I feel that this was valuable information that would've taken a lot longer to find or learn if it was on my own. I highly recommend this and the best thing is it was completely free. Make sure to take lots of notes and ask questions specific to your situation. You can schedule follow-up appointments as you reach milestones in your marketing plan as well. There are also some marketing workshops but some of those have fees so watch out for that. I was surprised but there is no "catch", it's just a taxpayer supported organization for supporting small businesses.

tldr; [https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your- business/market...](https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your- business/market-research-competitive-analysis)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very insightful. I currently live in London, so I will try to find the closest alternative. Thank you so much :)</comment></comment>


You Want A New Open Source Operating System? I Am Your Man - <AUTHOR> http://nickmudge.info/?post=139

<comment><USER2> I might be wrong here, but I don't remember Linus asking someone finance him While writing Linux. Dude, just do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I started working on it part time and I will continue. I would just like to work on it full time.</comment></comment>


Light-field Camera – Computerphile [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEMP3XEgnws <comment><USER2> In that channel there are some videos of Brian Kernighan talking about his Bell Labs years. Pure gold.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is data science so popular with developers? - <AUTHOR>

I notice that a lot of software developers at my workplace are mystified by data science. What about data science is attractive to software engineers? <comment><USER2> Knowing how to apply statistics is a good way to determine answers to questions. And knowing answers to questions isn't a skill used only by developers; it's a skill useful for _every profession_.

"Data science" is more-or-less a buzzword that sounds cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's new. It's similar to what they already do. It isn't trivial like cat pictures or boring like databases. It's obviously going to be very important. It is believed to involve math. It can be about almost anything, including things people talk about at cocktail parties. Because it is new, it is not necessarily about anything in particular.

And it has been talked up for years by attractive, articulate, impressively credentialed and well to do people who seem to be getting everything they want out of life.

[http://www.hilarymason.com/about/](http://www.hilarymason.com/about/)</comment>


A Bug's Death (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/opinion/a-bug-s-death.html

<comment><USER2> People can wake up and spend the entirety of their day enclosed in various climate controlled environments, travelling on man-made surfaces using energy from burning dinosaurs to propel them, sit down and write about potential _ecological hazards_ from genetic engineering. New York itself can't bear the thought of having nature among it, so they put cars into central park.

This is clearly more informed than many other opinion pieces out there, but it's hard to escape the feeling that someone from an alien species reading it and considering the world we live in would not immediately start laughing from the utter satire it is.

<comment><USER3> > New York itself can't bear the thought of having nature among it, so they > put cars into central park.

This seems like an extremely cynical, not to mention pretty dubious explanation for why there are (occasionally) cars in Central Park.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somehow I expect that releasing such a death gene would just breed a race of mosquitos that is immune to the death gene...

<comment><USER5> Well, yes - it would be the other existing species of mosquitoes. But that would be mission-accomplished if those other species don't happen to be malarial vectors. Carrying malaria is not a necessary thing for mosquitoes to do in Africa, they don't _need_ to spread malaria to humans in order to survive and reproduce.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't clear enough. I meant a race of the malaria-carrying species.</comment></comment></comment>


Live Chat Support Thats 100% Free – Public Beta - <AUTHOR> http://nicechat.co/

<comment><USER2> I signed up, but I don't think I will implement it on my site.

I currently use PureChat, which is also free, and they provide a very professional looking chat box that is easily customizable. With Nice Chat, I didn't see any templates and the chat box that is displayed looks plain with very few ways to customize it, so I pretty much gave up right there.

Good luck, and I hope this feedback helps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks eappleby for the feedback! My next dev release has some more customization options in it.</comment>


Ask HN: How would YOU stop the spread of fake news? - <AUTHOR> By now, we all know that social media sites have been guilty of allowing the spread of fake news (likely unknowingly). While many of these same companies are trying to find a fix for this, I wonder if HN'ers have innovative ideas on how to do this. What creative solutions/ideas do you have that could stop fake news from spreading (on social media AND elsewhere)? <comment><USER2> This "fake news" meme is as transparent as McDonalds and Burger King getting together and labeling all competing restaurants as "fake food".

Don't people understand that you're hearing this "fake news" meme every day because the dying corporate mainstream media industry is trying to discredit the independent media competition who is eating their lunch? Breitbart, Drudge, Infowars, and hundreds of smaller media outlets, YouTube Channels, Twitter accounts, and the like in many cases are getting as much or more attention than the old media and siphoning off clicks and ad revenue.

The dying old guard is fighting for its life and trying to use its last gasping breath to put in place social media policies, social engineering, search engine manipulation, and technical solutions to try and smother their competition.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this will come off as sarcastic, but I honestly mean it -- we should be teaching people to think critically.

The more that we outsource higher order thinking to machines (and badly I might add), the worse this problem will get.

We should be finding better ways to get more readers to think critically.

I don't this this is a tech-solve, but rather a human one.

<comment><USER4> This way it always ends with "Well, schools have to teach that, too". While critical thinking surely is something schools should teach, for the foreseeable future there will be an underclass and we should take some intermediate steps.

I think the root of the problem is that attention equals money and you get the most attention with shocking news or extreme viewpoints. There are some media types less dependent on money, which seem to work better. I think we should think about ways to expand their audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Fake News" seems to be the politically correct term for censorship. Why does no one frame their question in this way?

So, my answer is I don't stop it because this is modern day book burning, nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER6> How much would you be willing to pay HN'ers for giving you awesome ideas?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a huge business opportunity for new startups. Of course everyone will share their awesome ideas and creative solutions here :)</comment>


Scientists reverse the aging process in mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/28/scientists-reverse-ageing-mice-humans

<comment><USER2> It's not that they reversed the aging process, they introduced telomerase back to the mice, which were already damaged to begin with as a result of the genetic tampering to deprive them of it in the first place. The mice then healed. I wouldn't say they reversed the aging process, but rather made it more normal again - did they end up getting cancer?

A rabbi recently told me that the shortening of life expectancies started after Noah and the flood, and that Abraham was the first person who's physical appearance began to decline in line with his age, which he wanted - he wanted to look his age. He also said that after the flood something happened to us, but biologically we're capable of living a lot longer.

<comment><USER3> I'm not particularly religious (to be transparent)

But maybe thats a little less personal observation from the rabbis perspective, and a little more bible/gospel based hearsay ?

<comment><USER4> I would say that that's what rabbis do. It's not hearsay, they interpret ancient scripture and tradition, some of which is more modern than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could I appeal to all those excited by this research to please grow the fuck up? We're all going to die. Get over it. You're having your time right now - go and make the most of it instead of wasting it moping that it's not going to last forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> RMR and the Mprize!!!</comment>